Building a European University Consortium: The case of the U!REKA-Network

European policy makers encourage close interorganizational collaboration of universities across national systems. The study at hand analyzes this development from the organizational level of specific Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and their international network. Using a case study approach, we investigated the development and governance of the U!REKA-Network, a group of European Universities of Applied Sciences, founded in 2016. Compared to other organizational networks, university-networks have specific characteristics with regard to their goals (high importance of prestige and normative goals) as well as to internal management (loose coupling) of the participating institutions. Establishing comprehensive and sustainable collaboration is a challenging task that requires a functioning interplay between university management, academic heartland and support structures. Attractive opportunity structures for academics and students as well as an integrated and persuasive communication is needed to foster network participation on a broader scale. Mutual trust is very important for network engagement as well as its sustainability and the study offers some useful insights on this topic. Concerning the appropriateness of different governance modes, the empirical results furthermore indicate that there is a certain need for central administrative structures on the network level in international university networks.